CWU Guest Speaker On 'Nazis In The Northwest'

April 29, 2005

Contact: Chenyang Li (509-963-1817/fax 509-963-1822/e-mail: lic@cwu.edu)

ELLENSBURG, Wash. - In 1974, the Aryan Nations was formed as the political wing of the White supremacist Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. Hayden Lake, in northern Idaho, served as Aryan Nations headquarters and home to the annual Aryan Nations World Congress.

That all changed in 2000, when a jury unanimously found that guards at the organization's compound were responsible for an assault on a woman and her son. In the civil proceedings, the Aryan Nations was fined $6.3 million, which forced the organization into bankruptcy.

Norman Gissel was an attorney who helped prosecute the case. He will discuss "Nazis in the Northwest and Cultural Warfare" during a presentation at Central Washington University on Wednesday, May 4, at 3:30 p.m. in the Samuelson Union Building Ballroom.

Gissel, a board member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Rights, has spent the last 25 years lecturing throughout the U.S. about Nazism and why the Pacific Northwest, in particular, appeals to Nazi ideology.

Gissel's free, public presentation is sponsored by the university's philosophy department and diversity center in conjunction with a course on "Post Holocaust Response" taught by Dr. Heidi M. Szpek, CWU religious studies professor. It also coincides with Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day 2005 that marks the 60th year of liberation for those who suffered under the Nazi regime.

For more information, or for persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-2839, or (for the hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.